Here’s another one from Max, a proverbial fountain of synchronicity. He also contributed Dominoes, The Little Prince and The Magic Teapots. The following story took place in January 2007, a few months after the teapot story, which all his fellow workers had heard about. But we’ll let Max tell it.
***
I was in Chicago with the rest of my department. The last morning, a handful of us went out seeking some breakfast. We didn’t know where to go – the owner of the company had told us we should check out some place right by the hotel, but none of us could remember the name in our hung-over states.
So I decided that we should just head out walking in a randomized direction – determined by having a coworker who was not coming with point in a direction of his choosing. He pointed, and that’s the way we walked off, with all of our bags in tow (we had 2 to 3 hours before the train departed), all smiles and openness to whatever goodness the universe and Chicago wanted to float our way.
After a couple blocks it was clear that whatever the cafe the owner had suggested was, it wasn’t this way. We pressed on, hoping for something good to happen. We passed a McDonald’s on Chicago Ave, we voted it down. Eww.
Just then a ragged guy approached me and introduced himself – he was Andre, and homeless. I tend to give anyone who asks for money whatever change I have on me at the time, so I reached into my coat pocket and found that I had a fistful of quarters, which I gave him. He thanked me and we continued on.
A block or two later, we turned onto State Street, and saw a small place called Deangelos Deli. My co-workers were losing faith in finding a good place to eat in this random manner, so we opted to just try the deli. Maybe it would be great .. although it really didn’t look promising.
As we crossed the street and started walking through the door, I heard Andre the homeless guy urgently shouting behind me – “Hey! Hey!!”
I waited for him to catch up as the others went inside.
Andre shook my hand again, and then said “I apologize. What are you guys looking for?” I told him we were going to get some breakfast.
“Oh no, no – don’t eat here – this place is always in the paper, it’s nasty,” he exclaimed.
“Do you have someplace else in mind?” I asked. Andre said he did. Not worried about it but doing the motions of caution, I asked him where the place he had in mind was (I didn’t want us to be led down an alley and robbed). But he assured me that it was just a couple blocks ahead on the street we were on – he said he could see the sign from where he stood.
The others were inside looking at the menu behind the deli counter, but no one had ordered anything yet, so I banged on the glass and beckoned everyone back out. When they emerged I told them that we were following Andre, who knew of a better place to eat.
While we walked, Andre explained to us that the deli we’d almost eaten at was ‘always in the paper’ – for failed health code inspections. (Apparently in Chicago regular surprise health inspections are a really big deal – https://www.chicagotribune.com/features/food/chi-dirty-diningoct09,0,2423980.story)
So we walked down the road – and it quickly became apparent that the place Andre was bringing us to was in fact ‘Tempo’ – the very cafe that we had been hoping to stumble across in the first place.
My coworkers were amazed – I just had to smile and say – “See? Teapots!”
We ‘tipped” Andre handsomely for his help, and went inside. The food was excellent, and we were grateful we hadn’t settled for the questionable deli.
After breakfast was done we went up to the counter to pay. The guy working the register was beaming and chatty – super happy. It turned out he was the owner of Tempo.
Some other guy was hanging a piece of paper up on the wall next to the register, behind him – and I was delighted to discover that the synchronicity wasn’t over yet – the reason the owner was so happy was because Tempo had just passed their annual surprise health inspection, while we’d been eating. The paper being hung up as we watched was the certificate from the Chicago health department.
***
Max also contributed Dominoes.
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